


Animus ex Machina

by Tomatograter



Category: Homestuck, Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Howl's Moving Castle Fusion, Autistic Jake English, Bastardization of ms Diane's novels which is the only thing i will apologize for. thank you queen, Canon/Headcanon Trans & NB characters, Dirk is a 70 something old man and i love him, Homoerotic Undertones to soulbonding, Howlstuck, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:14:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21912748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tomatograter/pseuds/Tomatograter
Summary: Dirk believes he's doomed to live and die as a hatter. In Skaia, the eldest of three children always gets the shortest end of the stick- and he's no exception. When an unlucky encounter and harsh words result in a spiteful witch transforming him into an old man, his only shot at salvation (or maybe his fairest end) seems to be held within the selfish grasp of one Lord English, the fireplace demon he's bound to, and their moving castle.Or; Dirk Strider’s 10 step course to desecrating a fairytale.
Relationships: Jake English/Dirk Strider
Comments: 15
Kudos: 121





	Animus ex Machina

**Author's Note:**

> The journey to this fic was a funny one. It started out as Howlstuck, in my doe eyed innocence and eagerness to replicate my crush on the titular wizard of the ghibli movie, then it quickly descended into me reading the book by Jones, and the subsequent numbers on the series, which made this more of an DianaWynneJones!Stuck but i realized nobody would be there to stop me if i sprinkled in the Miyazaki intrigue for my own entertainment. Or if i just started changing shit left and right. So there you have it. If the structure here sounds familiar, that's because i'm still gluing in some of the passages from the book with the milkshake blender version. Special thanks to Tam for betaing 17k words worth of mess in this thing, so i'm not left helplessly to my own hubris!
> 
> that being said, if you have issues with emetophobia, be wary of the post-Cesari’s section. It’s short but it’s there.

Beginnings are hard. The beginnings of fairy tales particularly so, regardless of how simply they may try to present themselves. There's always a kingdom, always a curse, always a deal to be set up. Most importantly, there's always a message. The plurality of viewpoints present in oral tradition, passed down generations, often results in a tendency to gently scold the audience with aunty-like headpats. It’s not only a story, it’s a story with a backbone —says the firm hand that grasps the plot— it’s a story with _morals._

The moral of this one is: Dirk Strider is going to die.

To his credit, he understood this. As his slightly hunched figure struggled to hike up a steep incline, the thin layer of flat boot separating the soles of his feet from the ground seemed to find itself at odds with mismatched chunks of rocks and wood among the dirt. It made Dirk stumble ever so slightly, and he chastised himself for not picking more appropriate gear for the outing. 

He had been climbing for countless hours. Having left in a hurry that very morning, it was no coincidence that he lacked something as basic as a pocket-watch. He had no fucking way of telling what time it was, and hadn't been paying enough attention for a rough estimate. All that mattered is that it felt like _forever_. He was hyper-aware of how the afternoon sun hassled him to no end, and how it managed to make his clothes stick to him like a melting caramel encased in a gross, wrinkly piece of plastic wrapper. Around him, green grass unfolded like a massive tapestry as far as the eye could see, flickering with short gusts of wind just strong enough to make him yearn for colder weather. Prolonged exercise was beginning to take a toll on his old bones, and Dirk's empty stomach rolled and grumbled like an upset storm, clearly angered by his decision to skip breakfast.

He turned around, expecting to see the city merely as a gray dot painted on the distant shoreline, and was thoroughly disappointed when met by a clear, generous view of Market Square; just distant enough that he was looking down on the tiled geometrical rooftops and parapets, but close enough that he could still spot the distinct slate roof of his own home and live-in shop not far behind. 

This wasn't great news. At the pace he was going, he had expected himself to have disappeared into the indistinguishable woods long ago, but this body had set him back. 

Dirk grunted, knocking the end of his wooden cane against the flat earth, and stubbornly shuffling to sit among the bushes shadowed by fat clouds overhead. If travelling by foot at an excruciating snail’s pace was going to take him all goddamned day, he figured he might as well take a rest while he's ahead, and have a bite to eat.

In hindsight, he should have realized this sooner — that being thrice as old meant only a third of his usual speed — but it didn't make him any less bitter. He focused his eyes away from the creases and aged spots on his hardened hands as he hastily unwrapped the boxed chunk of cake that was going to serve as makeshift lunch, and tried not to dwell on the fresh memories of what had landed him on this situation. They'd upset him and the fragile, eery lightness he had managed to forge to be able to face this day head-on with no regrets. Or at the very least, to take it with a sense of finality. 

But he realized the silence upset him more, so he made a point of chewing as loudly as he could. And swallowing just as loud. And in no time, he was choking on cake and air and knocking his fist against his chest as if urging his throat cavity to quit pussying out through violence alone (although that didn't work), and rolling into the bushes to cough some more, in hopes he could at least spit evidence into it if it came to disaster. It didn't, but Dirk nearly knocked his head against the hard surface of a huge turnip face. The turnip itself was connected to a larger stitched-up body, laying crucified against a crooked pole. It was a scarecrow, to be precise, stuffed between the leaves and grime with enough subtlety to disappear in the scenery. 

Mildly interested in getting a better look at it, he hoisted the body up by the striped scarf tightly knotted around its neck, fighting against gravity's pull to balance the heavy wooden mast stuck through its spine in such a way that it didn't risk escaping his grip and rolling downhill. Dirk leaned it against flat rock for safety reasons and sat back, marveling at how it almost felt like he had company with him. Save for the weird diagonal position it was trapped in, of course, and how its stuffy limbs flapped uselessly on the wind with the odd familiarity of a lightweight puppet. 

At least he really liked puppets. Worn out from weather, the turnip head’s black scribbles for eyes and wide grin of crooked teeth left something to be desired, design-wise. It was too crude. But it looked well dressed (or as well-dressed as you could consider rags to be) wrapped in a tattered lavender coat with tails and all — and the scarf made it look posh, if not a bit charming.

"How fucked up is it that you look better than me?" Dirk said to nobody in particular, as he sprawled his legs out to soothe his walking aches. "Really fucked up, in my opinion. But you've got to be, what, less than a month old? Don't think turnips last that long outside. You'd be rotting and shit in a couple weeks."

He took another bite of his cake, huffing. 

"You're pretty damn lucky some hare didn't rip your face off. We're entering hunting season and this place starts to squirm with those things, popping out of warrens like furry little maggots ready to raid every unsuspecting veggie farm without a rabid guard dog trained to have a psychopathic streak."

The scarecrow somberly stared.

"I almost got bitten by one on my way up here. Path's too narrow, you know?" Dirk looked at it for signs of agreement, and decided the slight flapping of its lapels _could _be counted as a nod. "Had to bonk it with a stick over the head. I tried fending it off with my cane at first, but the little shit kept on biting like it saw me as the world's most malnourished strip of bacon, and I was afraid it was going to break through the wood. Didn't wanna risk that. This is a special walking stick, to me."__

____

____

Dirk looked at the stick with an awful lot of bottled up angst. Then he looked at the scarecrow, too far gone to stop now that he had found a willing recipient to a good rant.

"Do you want to know why? I want to tell you why. So I'm going to."

Dirk, as the turnip was soon to find, was no stranger to talking to himself.

* * *

# 0 

# In which fantasy Dirk talks to hats.

Just south of the opulent domains of Prospit’s golden city, buried between the moors and the mountains that constituted a good third of Skaian terrain, stood the city of Port Carapace. 

It was by all accounts a rather unremarkable town, not particularly large, but definitely not so small as to go unnoticed. Emblazoned with nicked old warm-colored bricks and long since taken as a transitional spot, it was a village built in convenience. Large royal cruisers and rough-hewn merchant ships came to pick up fresh produce and travelers at the port, leaving just as soon as cargo was secured. Hitchhikers and tourists would find inns to spend the night, and set out walking before the first crack of dawn. Young men would be regularly conscripted into knight-training, eager to leave their farmer's apprenticeships behind as mere dried mud in the soles of their boots. One would rarely linger, unless for some reason they found themselves bound to it. "Stuck", as it were.

Which is just where we may begin.

Strider's hat shop & General Repairs was located down Market Chipping, smack-dab in the middle of the path separating a pagan apothecary from the local church. Its current owner and namesake was the eldest of three children, a bit of a recluse and taciturn young man who just so happened to skip the dashing offer of leaving his hometown to be a part of the royal guard — although not _willingly_. The irony in being named after a dagger did not escape Dirk Strider in the slightest. Nor did the burden of being the oldest.

_Three_ was an unlucky number of children to have, according to auguries uttered by none other than the thousand gobs of prophetic horrorterrors inhabiting the Skaian mesosphere — a vast, writhing blanket of unknown that enveloped the furthest reaches of their planet. (Do try to keep up, now.) _"It is an unbalanced count,"_ professed the clerics of the deep whenever a chance provided itself, waddling up to their chins in baby-making propaganda shoddily disguised as "translations" of the Old One's whims. 

_"And it should be known, as is foretold; that the eldest of three children is to bear the brunt of always being the one to fail first, and worst, were the three of them to set out in search of their fortunes."_ Nobody ever bothered to ask why that was, but then again, nobody seemed to agree on whether or not the elusive creatures were even friends of foes, and just settled on treating them as gods, because that's what one usually does when faced with the appalling ordeal of processing cosmic insecurity. 

Dirk Strider was many things, but he wasn't prone to ignore free tips from fate. No matter how bullshitty they sounded. Convinced to find a workaround to the omen hanging by a very fine thread above his most precious carotid, he settled into planning his success from the local perspective. _On the realm of technicality,_ he figured, _he wasn't 'setting out' to find anything_ if he simply built it from the ground-up, relying on sheer force of will and a handy skill set. 

Once the curt notice of their father's death landed on their doorstep and his twin siblings hastily moved away, he was left with full custody of their indebted family house, and began shaping it to act as a storefront for his particular aptitude with a needle.

Growing accustomed to loneliness took little to no effort. It fit snugly around his body like a second skin. The atelier was calm and quiet, and in one way or another, he was always busy working — but he found the peace suited him. It allowed him to think as he sewed, while the months rushed by and the shop gradually grew in activity. Dirk used to meddle with ragged and well-loved plush toys even before necessity arose, so that was the next logical step. Children would usually pay loose pennies for a stitch, stuffing, or oiling of gears and clunky workings pertaining wind-up metal soldiers. 

But they weren't the only kind of customer, far from it. Enthusiastic groups of girls would often take the shelves and hangers by storm, moving like a murder of chipper crows. Caught up in their own bubble of gossip and in-clique fashion critique, they'd rarely ever pay him any mind. Some days, it was almost as if the hats sold themselves. The front bell would ring, and three to five ladies — sometimes seven, near the holidays — would rush into the premises, trading the latest news like the world's most speculative moving journal. 

This was where things got incredibly interesting. With a needle lodged between his teeth, idly tinkering with a yellowed rag doll or another, he could quietly preen his ears up and be in the know of all the latest. 

Sitting in his alcove, Dirk heard about how the mayor apparently had an embarrassing incident involving a newly discovered shellfish allergy, and how the freshly crowned Queen of Prospit suspected the Witch of the Waste had ordered the late king's untimely death, and how Bethany Bryant had eloped with a foreign troll heartthrob in the dead of night, leaving her parents devastated. Seven point five inches, they swore in rushed, but deeply commending whispers, _seven point five and charming as the purplest of devils!_

So when one day, from up the northwest hills and way past the last farm in the horizon, a misshapen, clanky and imposing castle strode into view walking on rusted metallic legs, it would be the understatement of the century to say that it was _“a bit of a surprise.”_

People were terrified, immediately assuming the carbonized metal beast and its four uneven smoke-spewing turrets belonged to nobody but the Witch herself, crawling out of the Waste as tensions arose, ready to terrify the entire country and then some just like she had done fifty years prior. The shop began to religiously empty itself out by five p.m; nobody wanted to be caught alone and out in the streets during nightfall anymore. Half of the apprehension towards the castle also came from the fact it simply didn't settle in one place. It was unpredictable. Sometimes it was a tall wavering shadow meandering around the moors; sometimes it reared near the rocks leading up to the water; and sometimes it sat, like a dragon, on the spreads of heather outlining the farms, always huffing and puffing out spirals of dull smoke, nearly blurring the clouds in the firmament as it went.

The mayor soon grew restless with all the bouts of odd activity, enough to be tempted to call on for the Queen's help the closer it dared to skirt around town, but it never quite broke the boundary to warrant any further action.

_It merely loitered._

The whispers, however, changed in the upcoming weeks. This was the most interesting thing to happen near the Port in actual decades.

Dirk learned, as he stitched in wax fruit and velours to bright Sunday hats, that the townspeople had figured out the castle didn't belong to the Batterwitch, but to one _Lord English._ Not that it warranted celebration. The bubbles of gossip always grew quieter when talking about him, and how he was apparently prone to entertaining himself with the affections of young women. The statements varied. Some claimed him to be blue-bearded, others told he really had gray skin, a few claimed him to be a thousand years old and subsiding on the ingestion of virgin blood, but everyone seemed to vouch for one similar thing: he devoured their hearts fresh, straight from their bloodied chest cavity. Or sucked their damned souls out of their bodies. Or maybe he made a meal out of the whole thing, with like, a grill. It depended on the age of who told the nefarious tale of the cold-blooded sorcerer and his reptilian ways, and who was there to listen.

(Dirk listened plenty as he toiled on, to the point he wondered if it wasn't about time the Lord and the Witch got arranged to be married. They sounded an awful lot like destiny-bound soulmates.)

"Really, that prick and the hag," he'd remark to the stitches woven on a newly finished bonnet, "would do us all a solid by fucking off to god knows where so they quit terrifying the whole clientele."

Bonnets weren't usually counted as viable conversational partners, even in a realm where the trees spoke and people came in thirteen odd shades of blood. This was entirely a Dirk Thing. He’d ended up developing the uncanny habit of talking to his hats as soon as he finished trimming them, sitting by the empty workbench. Dirk would place each hat above a mannequin stand where they looked like a blank body missing most of its face, and, while staring them down, made a truly heartfelt effort to compliment them in a way that sounded honest, or would to a client. It was a work in progress, but a calming exercise.

Sometimes he got a little creative.

"You look like a smart dog, reliable as they come." Dirk told a gray cap with serious flair. "The kinda guy you can really count on to not fuck things up, ever." He'd pat the stands' nonexistent shoulders, maybe give it an appraising but respectful nod. "You… look like you're going to belong to a very lucky lady," he told a straw hat with blood-tinted feathers. To an orange top hat he promised truth and stability. To a vivid butter-yellow sunhat draped in a colorful and elaborate bouquet of fake flowers, he talked about enduring beauty and glamour regardless of age. To a dazzling dark blue floppy hat covered in star-like twinkles, which much resembled the night sky, he paused to sigh briefly in awe of its might and said, "You'll attract an inevitable spotlight, distinguished from all the other median-rate fuckers who cross your way," because he was particularly proud of that one. But when it came down to a peculiarly simple-looking bonnet, dyed in a difficult greenish mushroom color and looking rather frazzled with itself, he started to come up a little short. 

With red-rimmed eyes from overwork, and fighting against the dawning light peeking out from his translucent curtains, he mused, carefully.

"You have a golden heart, and someone well off in life will see it, and promptly fall head over heels for you." He smiled weakly at the bonnet, mostly just pitying it. He hoped this one wasn't doomed to end up in the bargain bin.

It ended up being sold to one Martha Farrier little over a day later, who hadn't even needed the push of pretty words to buy it, given the horrendous state of her short hair when she came in. She looked like she had just survived an attempt on her life, like an attack from a rabid raccoon carrying explosive pellets. She tried the bonnet over the hay strands of her hair and settled on it without a second thought, rushing out of the store as quickly as she'd came. 

After all, it was general good practice to flatter a customer. Especially when speaking to the ones that might need a last convincing push to make a decent purchase; and besides, he didn't have nobody but Jane to talk to on a weekly basis. Even on the May Day before his life started to truly hit the shitter, he had a letter from her sitting atop his table and collecting a sizable amount of dust for a few weeks. Waiting for a reply he had shamefully neglected to write.

Somewhere along the past days his stocks had begun to dwindle, and production demanded his undivided attention. Perhaps a holiday approaching meant everyone wanted to look their very best, but the number of customs increased so dramatically he was forced to spend a few nights up, adjusting measurements and sprinkling finishing touches in between clients. He hoped the bags under his orange eyes weren't too perceptible on his dark skin. There was only so much he could prevent given the circumstances.

Truth to be told, he felt that maybe he was slipping a little. Around the seventh day of rush the borders of his vision turned fuzzy, his hands lost precision, and he might as well have been knocked out cold on his worktable.

Jane's letter stared as him, blurry edges and jagged ink, as his eyes dragged him back into a drowsy sleep. 

Hullo, Dirk! 

My my, aren't you just the hardest customer to get a hold of? I hope you're faring well! I feel rather silly partaking on the act of penning you a whole letter with capital "L" when we live in the same town and it happens to be such a small one… but no matter.  


May Day is approaching rather quickly this time of the year, isn't it. And I haven't seen you in weeks!! I must confess it worries me a little. Just... a teeny-weenie fraction of a bit. You know how it is. I'm sure you're probably up to your scalp waddling in the murky waters of some new time-consuming project that requests your utmost care, especially since Rose and Davey are long gone to try and regulate your whimsical spurs of activity. But tell me, would it be so terribly bothersome to spare some time for a dear old friend?  


Not to embellish my own exploits, but Cesari's has been bursting with customers ever since i've been moved to morning oven duties. You just have to see it! Not a single hotcake remains untouched under my dutiful watch! I'm afraid for the same reason we'll still be going strong throughout the holidays, with the troops coming round and whatnot, but I cannot stand the idea of letting you collect rust and rot in that tiny hat shop any longer! Commissions be damned.  


(Maybe that was a tad too dramatic, but it's written now, and this ink doesn't come in cheap, hoo hoo!)  


I miss you, Dirk. I'll save a fresh round of carrot cream cakes if you decide you’d like to come by around the free sunday. I know how much you like them! "Murderous chocolate bombs that do nothing but waste and ruin to your keto diets" as they may be and all. I promise i won’t tell anybody you’re skipping! 

With plenty of love,  


Jane. ;B 

* * *

He woke up feeling like pure dogshit in the middle of said fateful May Day afternoon. 

Dirk jumped off the stool, nearly knocking himself out on the wall as his legs refused to let go of the wood's sweet, romantic embrace, and checked the clock with nothing but raw panic written all over his face. Concluding he had slept two thirds of the day away, what transpired next was a race against sundown. The very first challenge was to take a shower that was, and he wasn't able to stress how difficult that would be, _quick;_ the second was slicking his hair back well enough to pretend he had been sparing a smidge of time to care for it; and the third was to find clothes that didn't leave him looking like a shipwrecked inmate. 

To his credit, he achieved about half of these things. But he hoped Jane wouldn't notice, or have the decency to restrain from pointing out the oily weight to his blond curls. He figured if he had begun to wash them, he'd be stuck in the bathroom for another good forty minutes, and time wasn't a friend to waste. When Dirk finally managed to set foot out on the street the sky had already stolen his cue, draping a sheet of long and narrow blood orange shadows all over town. 

Cesari's, or the baked goods emporium currently known as Jane Crocker's saccharine thunderdome, was found at the heart of market square, where the festivities celebrating the coming of spring would be moving at full mast all night. Metaphorically and literally speaking, seeing as they had a massive maypole set-up. Despite being situated blocks away from Dirk's home, he could already hear the strident music and telltale crack of pregame fireworks incessantly popping on the horizon. He rushed past lampposts being lightened and party goers with flowy long dresses giddily spinning on the cluttered sidewalk, barely escaping being elbowed to dust by smiley menaces clad in silk and flower crowns.

It was with a dull sense of horror that he, and a good twenty other people, came to an abrupt stop before the presence of the accursed castle, precariously balancing itself above the trail tracks and chimneys not too far away. 

A curious sight to behold; to watch It rumble with vigor and burst with bouts of blue and emerald flames licking away from its turrets, far into the late afternoon sky. 

Had that been intended as a declaration of hostility about all the noise, or a clumsy attempt to join in on the party? As the crowd pushed him onward, Dirk decided it was most definitely the latter, watching colorful fire sparks rain down from above with harmless and utterly aesthetic precision. 

He ended up being dragged a few ways too far from his intended destination, having to run from under men in stilts and golden masks to finally squeeze himself into the bakery.

To his demise, he soon found out it wasn't any breezier inside.

Jane, bless her beautiful heart, was immediately able to distinguish him from the dozens of other frenzied men piling up on the long oak counter separating the servers from the clients. She looked far too glamorous for work wear, sporting pearls and baby blue stripes, slipping long strings of punched coins into her tips jar and handing quaint little frilly red boxes out in exchange. Carefully refusing all half-muttered invites for a night out but accepting their desperately generous donations to the cause while they were still hot off the source. Her face broke into an overjoyed grin and entirely uncharacteristic squee when she spotted him standing by the ornate double oak doors. She nearly hauled an idle body out of her merry way while rushing from under the counter to drag him out of the premises, loudly announcing she was _"Going to take a break, please and thank you!"_ and pushing him into the break room as she spoke. 

"Oh you complete scoundrel, I thought you weren't going to show up!" She closed the door unceremoniously hard on the disappointed moans of the damned— those still standing for a rejection in the other room. 

_'I promised I would.'_ Dirk’s mind attempted to auto-complete, then immediately berated itself upon remembering he hadn't even drafted an answer to the invite. So instead he said; 

"Hey, carrot cake specialty." Like a lazy douche. "Who would pass that up? Some shithead, not me."

"That's you alright." Jane laughed at him, the glitter applied on her glossy ruby lips and over her bright blue eyes shimmering under the warm light. She gave his back an amicable and sound _slap,_ going around the corner to shout something into the kitchen hole. 

Dirk settled on a wooden chair, staring at the barrel table holding a delicate porcelain tea set in front of him, and waited until she came back holding a tray with their plates. He had never been inside before, much less in the employees-only area. It felt oddly private, but comfortable, to be surrounded by golden loaves of bread. 

Jane chirped on as she set down the cutlery, "You know, you look far less dead than i thought you'd be a this rate!" 

"Thanks?"

"It was a compliment, silly." She rolled her eyes, and deposited a plate with the fattest slice of chocolate-dipped carrot cake ever known to man in front of him. "I do mean it, but I'd probably have set my expectations fairly higher if a certain _gentleman_ had bothered to give me so much as a measly sign of life!"

"I'm sure when I die no one's going to be able to hear the end of it." Dirk cut into the pliant crust with a careful fork, and Jane let out an indignant huff. "For the record, that was a joke, silly."

Jane looked at him with a suspicious pout. She did that quite often at the counter, for the sympathy points it earned her. It was a smart tactic, to tug on a poor sap's heartstrings. He wasn't immune to it in the slightest. 

"Albeit not a very funny one, buster."

"Can we retake this conversation from the top?"

"Just… how are you, Dirk? I’d rather take us from there." Jane patted her uniform's apron casually, mimicking the habitual motion of cleaning flour from her pristine fingers. 

Dirk hummed at the question, mouth full. 

"You wanna hear only the gourmet curated sides of the banquet o' Strider or the complete, ass-naked version of it?"

"How is that even a question? Everything!" 

"Right. I'm beat. Mollified. I’ve never been so fucked-up tired in my whole life, and i truly do mean never _ever._ Latch onto that word. I've begun to think my arms are about to start shedding like a boneless baby salamander after being hurled into its first campfire." Jane's expression reshaped itself into one of confusion, her eyebrows rather high. 

She was used to his expletives, it was other things that bothered her.

"I was under the impression you had given up sword practice?"

"I didn't say anything about swords. I've been sewing the caps of my fingertips off, fun stuff." Dirk shrugged, more than half lightheartedly saying it. "I don't know what's shifted in people, maybe hats are fashionable in Kingsbury this time of the year? All I know is that folks fuckin' love hats. A while ago I thought I'd need to take clock repairing classes to stay afloat, but surprise, turns out the general consensus is everybody's a little horny for headgear this season? Mark that for the kink bingo." That pulled a laugh out of her, and it was enough for him to shrug the weight of this being an awkward conversation off his shoulders. "Telling it as i see it. How're _you?"_

"Well... never a dull moment in here. That's for sure!" 

"Gathered as much, what with the wolf pack just outside." He motioned with the fork, poking the air with the pointy end of it. Jane looked like she agreed wholeheartedly, fork-ways.

"Now hush, you." Jane’s stare lingered on the door as she flushed slightly, taking a breath before she looked to off to the opposite side. The room was covered in rows and rows of lidded desserts, a tidy little box of confections. "They like me an awful lot, don't they? But I'm certain it's for my _incredible personality._ " She made a broad hand gesture from her neck down, suggesting her decolletage. Jane managed to make even that look rather classy, if not outright conducted by poise. 

Dirk's thoughts briefly wondered how much that would help him in the hat trade. But not the manners part, the tits part.

"Does it often get this annoying?"

"Boy does it ever." He hummed in acknowledgment — not regretting the fact he'd been imbibed in macho juice every other day of the month on the _slightest._ "But between just the two of us, their affections do come in rather handy when you get a hold of managing them. You wouldn't believe just how plump my savings look!" 

"I can definitely take your word for it." 

"Eleven jars!" She laughed incredulously, hands outstretched in what Dirk registered as an approximation of their total volume. "Filled up to their very top. Some I had to squeeze in tight and knot together with string, just to be on the safe side. No spillings!" 

Jane was starting to pick up steam, her words growing more excitable and confident by the minute. Dirk liked to hear her speak, if only to study her confident prowess when it came to building the most charming of salesmen pitches. But besides that, he really liked Jane an awful lot. She had a knack for bringing life into things, a talent he sorely lacked. 

"And I take it you already got something appropriately _splendid_ planned for them?" 

"Yes!" She clasped her hands together. "Well, keep eating your cake. You see… this arrangement always seemed… _temporary, to a point._ There's only so much I can milk from a well-meaning apprenticeship in a hobby I, humbly speaking, already dominate." Jane put her elbows up the table, cupping her mouth like a ten year old eager to share a weird bug she found in a sandbox. "I'm opening a private eye's office." 

A _what?_

"A what now?"

"A personal investigator's headquarters! A detective hideout. Oh, and just you wait to see how inconspicuous it'll be! The outside, _just hear me out on this one:_ the outside is going to be an unassuming toybox-and-pranksterism smile shop! I simply can't count on stray luck to keep getting well-paying cases, so the childish glee is bound to keep me afloat, economically speaking. You know how we're branded as a tourist town now? Goodness gracious, the amount of opportunities to bait people in with kitschy keepsakes and souvenirs is _tremendous._ "

She's got it all laid out already. The months Jane had been working at Cesari's, according to her, had been mostly a learning experience when it came to raw expenses and stock management. She dreamed of far bigger things, as an only child and early orphan not entirely unlike him. Only that she got her head start younger, when her old aunt and only relative passed away. All the valley-girl bullshit was getting on her nerves, but she had been holding in for the bounty. Dirk quickly felt self-conscious about his haphazard system of overworking. In brute comparison, the most he had planned ahead was in regards to covering the house's debt, accumulated after his father kicked the bucket and the royal family didn't make a habit of paying knight services post-mortem, as part of the service oath. 

"And there's more," she continued, nursing some sweet tea for her throat at this point. "I'd be happy to offer you a place among the crew, if only because I find it so terribly dreadful to see you cooped up somewhere, all day and night! It's not good for one's psyche, you know what they say about hatters…" 

That quickly made him focus again.

"You mean as part of your snooping crew?" 

"If you'd like that, yes, otherwise I'd be happy to employ someone with your particular… _touch,_ when it comes to stuffed creatures and the like. So long we funnel that creative vision for the children."

"I'm assuming that's a sound 'no' on my pitch for horses with voluptuous behinds."

"Goodness no!!" Jane flushed with an overwhelmed laugh, batting the thought of it away. "We want to sell them, not use them to scare the common folk."

"A considerable loss. You drive a hard bargain, Crocker."

"I just think you shouldn't exile yourself to living in the bare minimum of convenience, Dirk." There's this implicit emphasis to her words as she laid a hand atop his, trying her best to sound like a comforting figure. "Don't you want something more out of life? Some goddamned excitement, for once! I know we barely hear of it, but there's just so much happening in the world just outside, all the time. Especially as of late, with the whole hullabaloo of witchery and sparking animosity between kingdoms and odd activity ramping up all over the place… I just want to have a chance to help you, like you've done to me."

"You really didn't have to worry about that. I don't think I'm cut out for any sort of…" _Relevance._ "... Risky investments. Although I'd love to help mapping the shit out of business, if you lend me some time. You can focus on fixing up the money and i'll make the rest of the cogs click into place as far as distribution and imports go. Pull some strings taut till we have a pitched tent furnished with every type of goodie, ready for an opening."

"You and your toys!"

"Hey. Don't knock it till you've tried it, I know I find them fucking adorable, and i'm the expert here." 

She gave his hand a hearty slap, halfway through a soft wheeze and an affectionate eye roll. 

"I'm not going to be responsible for binding you to yet another thing, alright? I am only giving you a way out if you see it fit. If that's something you really want to do, of course I'd love to have you on board! But I don't want you to do it for _me._ You, mister, have a serious problem, and it's about time you start living for _yourself._ "

Dirk was hit with an uncanny sense of deja-vu, recalling the day Rose was packing the last of her possessions into stuffy dark suitcases, the poster child of self-sustenance. Unlike Dave, who was a full minute and a half older, she had arranged an apprenticeship off town all by herself. _"I've agreed to study under a renowned witch in Upper Folding,"_ she simply announced at the dinner table one day, when it was down to just the two of them, and the heavy silence seemed to stretch and warp their small kitchen into a long-spanning maze. _"I'm set to leave in a few weeks, for the foreseeable future. She's a good one. I'm told her specialty is bones. Among communing with other beings."_

Dirk hadn't known what to say then, except some mild congratulations. He hadn't known what to say weeks later, when they’d loaded her luggage into the carriage, hoisting it up together. He was aware she had an insatiable curiosity when it came to the most unsavory parts of magic, but knowing Rose, she was most likely to exploit it for her own gains, given enough time. It suited her to have a daring future, after their collective moping around on the months that followed the notice of their guardian's death and Dave's unlikely conscription. As the _sort-of youngest child,_ she had a bright path laid before her. But in that particular day, amidst their awkward silence, it’d been Rose who’d reached out and tentatively grasped his shoulders — in her weird brand of stiff hug-adjacent gestures. She’d patted him lightly, and said she'd write often. _"But don't wait for me,"_ she’d squeezed, "Go and do something that's not some shitty half-hearted mock training for yourself. It'll be just you now, Dirk. Live a little."

She hadn't been as thrilled for his choices as he expected her to be, once Dirk wrote that he had turned the house into a hat shop and taken to repairing simple things as business. Keeping it in burning in the down-low. The Witch of Upper Folding, as it turned out, was an incredibly nice if not a little cranky foreign troll lady. _She uses honey in absolutely everything. I think i might develop a sugar repulsion, or even obsessive attachment, if I live to see the end of this._ Was all Rose wrote back in a deceptively tame, but incredibly excited letter by Rose standards.

"I swear, I'm having the time of my life. Cross my heart." He promised Jane with a little smile anyways, just see the tips of her eyes wrinkle with reassurance.

Dirk was still stuck thinking about it full thirty minutes later, standing outside Cesari's sculpted doors, holding a baggie stuffed with another decent chunk of cake beautifully wrapped in a celebratory box. At night, Market Square was decorated by flickering lights dancing amongst the joyous crowd, each a different dot of color shielding them from the dark, blinking above the muted blue. Long, ornate sleeves trailed in the air as dancers spun, and the reflective golden material coating most of the animal masks worn for the occasion sent glimmering dashes in every possible direction. All in all, it was a lovely party. Petals everywhere. Loud bangin' jazz. An indiscriminate amount of alcohol. Just enough deniability on furry activity to be ambiguous.

Dirk attempted to squeeze himself between the multitude of glittery costumes and warm bodies, but he found that the place was quite packed. Even more than the usual yearly amount, with what were definitely not locals. Under the lamplight, uniformed boots of the same cut leather marched alone or in pairs, on the lookout for partners for the rounds of dance involving the braiding of the maypole, or simply someone to drink with. Not too distant from them and merrily broadcasting their flirtatious intention, girls strode in dazzling groups, ready to be accosted by someone who wasn't caught up in clown pants and stilts. Turns out “Spring Festival” was a shorthand for “Fertility festival”, which in on itself was code for “Fuck: the party.” Dirk felt rather self conscious about his own dull choice on partywear. He hadn't even bothered finding anything braided or colorful, and just stood apart from everyone else like a tool. The truth was that he _could_ have done better, undoubtedly, and that somewhat infuriated him.

 _Living for himself._ What in the goddamn did they even mean by that, anyway? He had plenty of interests, and hobbies, and a broad catalogue of conversational subjects. Even if he didn't have much of anybody to discuss them with. He was having a lot of fun, exactly when he wanted it and how he wanted it. He just so happened to be busy most of the time. Or didn’t have enough patience to humour things that fell outside the realm of immediate necessity, like painted portraits of hot oiled up gladiators. In fact, he was certain he was doing much better than far more people his age could say they were, _thank you very much._ While they were busy getting laid, or something to that effect, he was building a career. Or at least scraping off debt, before he could work on said career. Same shit, slightly different execution order.

He was very confident about that, up until the point he wasn't, really. 

When the music was far too loud, and the cheerful chatter around him registered as nothing but irritating noise to his ears, Dirk worried his time alone had turned him into some sort of old grouchy ogre. He nearly shrunk into the earth, shrouded in doubt.

Maybe he needed to get laid. 

Urgently.

He watched a dude with a poorly shaven face wink and nearly trip on his coat as he beerily bent to kiss the tip of a giggly girl's fingers, and went _fuck yeah, I could do this. I'm hot shit. I even put on perfume tonight,_ while still standing perfectly inert in the middle of the motions, unaffected by the fireworks, like he was having an out of body experience.

He had to be objective about this, if he wanted to get it right. Firstly, he had to find out who the gay guys were. Secondly, he had to find someone who was, by all accounts, desperate. Taking in the environment, he quickly rationalized _why_ this May Day seemed so uncharacteristically packed; a good number of the men were dressed in the same loose military deployment garb, something that looked like an awful gray in the moonlight. A bunch of poor fuckers scrambling around to find one last _hoorah_ before they were dropped into the angry jaws of conflict, from which there was no guaranteed return. These seemed like an easy enough catch, though he didn't know what to make of the inherent melodrama attached. He didn't want to fall asleep to anybody's tears tonight, that wasn’t his type. 

Absorbed in nefarious thoughts, once Dirk felt a hand press on the small of his neck, he jumped. Barely registering the _'Hey'_ that came with it.

"Oh dear youre a fidgety one."

He wasn’t sure if the man had an accent thick as molasses, or if he was slurring the words out from intoxication. What he was deadly sure of, somehow, was that he sounded weirdly like the color _green._ The thought was archived for later, however, given the pressing question of his easy toothy smile and slight sway of feet. A quick scan under the moonlight revealed that not only was he free of military bling, but he was quite possibly the most extravagantly dressed reveller among the whole bunch. From Dirk, that didn’t necessarily mean a compliment. He looked snobby and rich, with shimmering glitter sleeves and golden threads carefully woven on deep green silk and tight-fitting khaki pants. _Like a peacock,_ he noted with a frown. A peacock with foggy glasses and yellow eyes bright like two lit coals in the evening.

“What do you want.”

Inspired opening, highly amicable. Dirk was clearly a man incredibly gifted on the subject of social interaction. 

The fellow cleared his throat. 

“Well, I errm, couldn’t help but notice you looked relatively adrift there!” He sounded very drunk, no question about it. "Figured I'd give you a hand, why not! 'S free of charge, pal." Dipping forward with a quickness that felt almost alien to someone his size, he grabbed Dirk's free hand like he meant to lead him into a waltz, slipping his second above the high of Dirk's back, and spun the two of them into the larger and livelier mass of dancers. 

The trumpets and drums seemed to perform a full 360° as the world rotated with them, growing into a manic rhythm. Dirk hyper-focused on the quantity of cold rings pressed onto his palm before anything else, accessing his particular opinions on being manhandled by someone that seemed to wish he was a spinning top. 

"I think you misunderstood, dude—"

"Did I now? You look awfully like you need some wicked water to spring your step!"

Dirk could've wiggled his way out of this one, given how they were still sort of moving in tandem and half-screaming at each other over the sound of idle chatter and a booming saxophone leading the instrumental choir. But he sounded legitimately jolly, like the kind of tool that pays for everyone's tab at the bar if you only humour him a little bit. And he had a stupid little floppy haircut that spiked up in one side.

This complicated matters. 

"I don't know the dance!" Dirk sputtered, atypically honest upon pressure. _Live a little! Well, shit, he guessed he would._

He seemed to consider this for half a second, squinting in the dark to make the words out from all the other noise. The world was a blur of color, relentlessly gyrating with all the speed and ability of a carousel piloted by a three year old infant on a power trip. 

"Why, that's no issue!" He laughed, somehow unbothered by all of it, hair swirling in the wind. "Feel free to step on any of my two left hooves, so long you'll forgive me for my own mishaps!"

Dirk considered laughing, if only out of pure bafflement. This was ridiculous. His partner, whom he judged to be more or less on the side of late twenties, seemed to catch on some unspoken hint the moment he tipped his head down to look at their shoes, breaking into a set of hearty highschool giggles.

"Figure of speech! I don' really have hooves, dearest, but, uh, um." He made an odd staccato noise, swaying all too drastically to the left, in such a way that disrupted their flow and dragged Dirk into catching himself on time before he could tragically crash down onto his own ass. And Dirk had to try and support the big oaf as he stumbled erratically, too.

He realized with a muted sort of horror that the mess of a man was seconds away from throwing up, thanks entirely of his own irresponsible approach to 'dancing', and hurried to clumsily direct him to the nearest empty corner before he pulled an Exorcist — the classic book, featuring a terrifying little changeling girl, and copious amounts of vomit — on all the clueless victims jamming to the sick clarinet solo around them.

"Dude, _dude move your ass you're going to make a mess if—"_

Dirk's voice screeched to a halt when the man keeled over, and he struggled to quickly extricate himself from his grip. Whilst leaning heavily on the brick wall of the poorly lit alley, he regurgitated a long and wobbly thing. Dirk wasn't proud of the fact, but he watched it slither out of his mouth and splosh against the rocks under their feet in excruciating detail. 

He just couldn't take his eyes off it, it was like watching a limb be sliced off live. Disgusting and entrancing all in one. It could only be described as a dark and wet blob splattered against the cobblestones, with a somewhat vermilion glint to it, like raw uncooked liver pooled in its own juices. But it was too alarmingly sized to possibly be anything a human could've eaten under normal circumstances. There were no teeth marks, no rips. It looked whole, grotesquely viscous, and pulsating with poor gelatinous remains of life. 

Looking at it made his ears acutely aware of the steady drum of his own heart, blood running cold. 

He took a careful step back, trying to not sound alarmed as the stranger hunched over the light, having some difficulty in standing up straight. He began to cough, with an awful dry sound like rocks scraping against his thorax and fighting their way up to his throat. Dirk didn't feel inclined to ask him if he was okay. He didn’t want to. He was nosy, but not an idiot. And he figured this weirdo was probably too drunk to give him any chase if he put his mind to it.

So slowly, he turned on his heel, stumbled into the darkest patch of the street he could spot through a mess of frantic arms and knees, and power walked home as fast as he could. Sparing few glances behind, like nothing had happened. This had clearly been a mistake. And the monkey's paw response to him trying to follow unsolicited advice.

He replayed the scene on his mind a good thirty times before being able to fall asleep.

And when he finally did, his dreams were filled by smokescreen visions of a vampiric mare, stark black and oddly ethereal against the vermilion outline of the sky. It was fucked up, but like, in a sort of hot way.

* * *


End file.
